Sectoral factsheets for climate change

United Nations 2 years ago

The world is warming faster than at any point in recorded history. This is radically changing the Earth’s climate and releasing a wave of extreme weather, including wildfires, hurricanes, floods and droughts. But humanity can still avoid the worst impacts of this climate crisis. To do that, the Earth’s temperature must be prevented from rising to more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. The only way to avoid catastrophic climate change is to rapidly slash our emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. These emissions, which come largely from burning fossil fuels, have continued to rise in recent decades despite a raft of international accords, including the Paris Agreement. To keep the 1.5°C temperature target alive, the world needs to cut 2030 emissions by 42 per cent. This must be done in tandem with climate adaptation. National Adaptation Plans in particular, are crucial for ensuring climate resilience is built into each of the sectors. By 2025, every country must commit to new National Determined Contributions (NDCs), these NDCs must cover all emissions and sectors. Global ambition in the next round of NDCs must bring global greenhouse gas emissions in 2035 to levels consistent with the 1.5°C pathway. Explore these factsheets to learn how.
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layersDaily Sustainability Digest

Published about 8 minutes ago



Social housing is becoming the proving ground for sustainable construction, with Octopus Energy’s Tenant Power tariff addressing the split incentive that has long blocked retrofit investment. Clearer returns for landlords should accelerate energy-efficient buildings, sustainable building design, sustainable design and eco-design for buildings, placing whole life carbon, net zero whole life carbon, embodied carbon, embodied carbon in materials, whole life carbon assessment, lifecycle assessment, life cycle thinking in construction and life cycle cost at the centre of decision-making. Procurement frameworks are set to move the market beyond pilot projects by aggregating demand, shortening delivery times and giving supply chains the certainty needed to scale net zero carbon buildings and low carbon building programmes. That shift supports environmental sustainability in construction through low carbon design, low carbon construction materials, low embodied carbon materials, renewable building materials, sustainable material specification, environmental product declarations (EPDs), resource efficiency in construction and circular economy in construction, including end-of-life reuse in construction. For teams working to BREEAM and BREEAM v7, the priority is measurable building lifecycle performance, carbon footprint reduction and a lower carbon footprint of construction across greener, more investable retrofit programmes.

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